Heart Health News

Joblessness Tied to Shortened Lifespans for Less-Educated Women

THURSDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) -- Life expectancy among
less-educated white women is decreasing while their better-educated
peers are gaining longevity, a new study finds.

According to the researchers, joblessness is one key factor in
the the trend. The other is smoking.

"Mortality is declining for high-educated women, but is increasing for low-educated women," said study co-author Jennifer Karas Montez, a research fellow in the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

American men, regardless of education level, enjoy an increasing
life expectancy, but the mortality gap is widening between white
women who didn't complete high school and those who did, the
researchers said.

From 2002 to 2006, the chances of dying for women without a high
school education were 66 percent higher than for women who
completed high school, the researchers found.

Employment and smoking are the two factors that appear to
explain this disparity, Montez said.

For the study, published in the June issue of the
Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Montez and her
co-author collected data on more than 46,000 white women, aged 45
to 84, who took part in a national health survey from 1997 to
2006.

The women were divided into two groups: those without a high
school education, and those with at least a high school
diploma.

Between 1997 and 2001, the death rate among women without a high
school education was 37 percent higher than for women who completed
high school. But by the years 2002 to 2006, that disparity
increased to 66 percent, the investigators found.

To explain this finding, the researchers looked at economic
factors including employment, occupation, poverty, home ownership,
health insurance and health factors including smoking, obesity and
alcohol consumption.

The two factors that stood out from the others in explaining the
widening gap were employment and smoking, the study authors
noted.

"Our study found that the increasing importance of education for employment and smoking behavior were the most important explanations for the growing gap in mortality risk across education levels among white women," Montez said. "We found little support for explanations such as obesity, marriage and mental health."

Policies aimed at improving the health of U.S. women should
focus on improving their social and economic circumstances, Montez
said.

"The obstacles are particularly high for low-educated women, who tend to have low-paying jobs with inflexible schedules," she said.

Employment has many benefits, such as social networks and a
sense of purpose, Montez said. It also builds self-esteem and
offers mental and physical activity.

"Access to social networks and support through employment may have become more important in recent decades, with high divorce rates, smaller families and geographic mobility disrupting other avenues of support," she said.

Implementing supportive work-family policies and efforts to curb
smoking may help close this life-expectancy gap, Montez said.

But focusing on the positive benefits of education and
employment are key, she added.

"It would be more effective to improve employment opportunities among women than it would be just increasing taxes on cigarettes," Montez said. "We need to go after the fundamental root cause of these behaviors rather than the behaviors themselves, and employment is an important lever to accomplish that."

Montez noted that the recent recession didn't play a role in
this study because the data only ran up to 2006. "The recession
would have hit after our study ended," she said.

Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale University Prevention
Research Center, wasn't shocked by the findings. "It's not all that
surprising to see that educational disparities correlate with
vocational disparities, which correlate in turn with behavioral
disparities, such as smoking," he said.

Health and social equity are indelibly linked, he stated.

"For those who accept it, and embrace epidemiology over ideology, the availability of decent jobs and educational support may be the right medicine for what is, in the end, a social kind of disease," Katz said.

While the study found an association between education and
mortality in white women, it didn't prove cause-and-effect.

Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.